Jack Kubinec

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TAPEDRIVE won the grand prize in the latest Colosseum hackathon, a popular hackathon-cum-venture accelerator started by original Solana Labs hackathon organizers.&nbsp;



The contest, which I tend to view as a partial litmus test for what Solana builders are interested in at the moment, had a large number of stablecoin entries, one organizer told me. But the grand prize winner took at a stab at a problem internal to Solana: the cost of storing data onchain.



Solana is the busiest blockchain in existence as things stand. With all of this onchain activity paired with fast block times, it can get expensive to store data on Solana. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and others have talked about this problem of reducing data storage overhead on the network.&nbsp;



TAPEDRIVE claims to have the ability to read or write data (that is, access or add it to the chain) 1,400x cheaper than Solana’s status quo.&nbsp;



The program basically bundles Solana data and adds less expensive cryptographic proofs to the blockchain. A network of miners is incentivized to store this data using the TAPE token. To earn these token rewards, TAPEDRIVE miners solve data storage challenges in parallel every minute to prove that they hold their assigned portion of the data archive. This all still relies on Solana’s proof-of-stake mechanism for security.



This sounds reminiscent of the first Colosseum <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ore-wins-50k-solana-hackathon">hackathon winner in ORE</a>, which was a viral proof-of-work game built on Solana that had miners solve puzzles every minute.&nbsp;



The project’s founder, known as Z, told me they’re still “shell shocked” after winning. “I’m really grateful to have the opportunity to work on this full time now. Job’s not done. I’m fairly optimistic it could help a lot of teams once it’s dialed in,” they added.



Interestingly, TAPEDRIVE intentionally doesn’t use zero-knowledge technology for reasons laid out in the white paper of data storage platform Arweave, Z said.&nbsp;



The rest of the hackathon’s winners ran the gamut from prediction markets to gaming, but Colosseum co-founder Matty Taylor said he thinks the strongest entries came from the stablecoins track. Builders in that area were pushing to “grow crypto payment adoption within specific regions and industries,” Taylor said.



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hackathon

Solana data storage project wins Colosseum hackathon

Jacquelyn Melinek

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 <ul>
 <li>“We’ve seen this explosive growth in the Solana ecosystem and a lot of that doesn’t come from the hackathon, but the hackathons are a focal point to get everyone together to build a product and showcase what they’re working on,” Yakovenko said. </li>
 <li>Ignition marks the fourth Solana hackathon and is expected to have an even stronger pool of participants after its third hackathon brought in over 13,000 developers</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Solana, a global blockchain platform, launched its Ignition Hackathon event on Tuesday with up to $5 million total in prizes and seed funding.&nbsp;



Ignition marks the fourth Solana hackathon and is expected to have an even stronger pool of participants after its third hackathon brought in over 13,000 developers, up 333% from 3,000 developers at the second hackathon earlier this year.&nbsp;



At the time of publication, over 370 participants signed up to participate just hours after the event was announced.



Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana Labs co-founder and CEO told Blockworks he expects about 13,000 developers to join the Ignition event, but added he wouldn’t be surprised if there were even more registrants.&nbsp;



“We’ve seen this explosive growth in the Solana ecosystem and a lot of that doesn’t come from the hackathon, but the hackathons are a focal point to get everyone together to build a product and showcase what they’re working on,” Yakovenko said. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="394" height="377" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg" alt="Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana Labs co-founder and CEO" class="wp-image-7440" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg?w=394 394w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg?w=269 269w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg?w=273 273w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg?w=229 229w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1_HKXHlXQZ-G365qO5tHrw1A.jpeg?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px" /><figcaption>Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana Labs co-founder and CEO</figcaption></figure></div>



“The space allows people to find teams and folks looking to build up Solana&#8230;Most of the teams weren’t people who knew each other prior to the hackathon, and the result of those are <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-labs-ceo-shares-roadmap-following-314m-fundraise/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pretty substantial growth</a> across the ecosystem because we’ve seen folks that are really hungry and dedicated to build a product and raise capital within a span of four weeks,” he added.  



Solana was founded in 2017 and is seen as a competitor to Ethereum, the largest blockchain platform for decentralized projects and applications. Solana is also known to be faster and cheaper than Ethereum for completing transactions, Blockworks previously <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-labs-ceo-shares-roadmap-following-314m-fundraise/">reported</a>.&nbsp;



The event will last from August 31 to October 8 and the grand champion will receive $75,000 USDC and tickets to attend the Solana Breakpoint conference in Lisbon. Although there will only be one “grand champion,” there will be multiple tracks and prizes for participants to launch their projects from including: Web3, DeFi, gaming and art and collectibles.&nbsp;



Ignition’s <a href="https://ignition.devpost.com/rules" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rules</a> defines the categories as the following: 



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>DeFi Track: Build decentralized finance applications, tools, infrastructure and more to push forward the crypto space.</li><li>Web3 Track: Build decentralized apps, DAOs, and infrastructure to cut the middleman out of popular web2 platforms.</li><li>Gaming Track: Design blockchain-based games, NFTs, and more to allow users to directly interact with p2p markets.</li><li>Digital Art and Collectibles Track: Create NFTs that can be sold or auctioned off that enable creators to directly connect with their fans around the world.</li></ul>



There are 47 judges for the event, including CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried, Founder of Circle Jeremy Allaire, Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares Meltem Demirors and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz Ali Yayha, among many others. 



The judges will be weighing their votes based on the project&#8217;s potential impact, functionality, novelty and design. Questions include: How will this project impact the growth of the Solana ecosystem? How well does the project work? How unique is the project? And is the user experience and design of the project well thought out?



Want more investor-focused content on digital assets? <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Join us</a> September 13th and 14th for the Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in NYC. Use code ARTICLE for $75 off your ticket. <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Buy it now</a>.